‘We Are Not Effectively Allowed to Do Much at All With the Airplane’: A Ukrainian Defense Executive on the F-16, and Why Ukraine’s Industry Would Rather Have Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen

‘We Are Not Effectively Allowed to Do Much at All With the Airplane’: A Ukrainian Defense Executive on the F-16, and Why Ukraine’s Industry Would Rather Have Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen

Ukraine flies 2 Western fighters today, the F-16 and the Mirage 2000, with Gripens and Rafales to follow. At the Kielce arms show, Ukrainian defense firms made clear which one their industry wants. "When something is wrong, the US team removes the defective component, and it gets shipped out of the country," a deputy director at a leading Ukrainian firm said of the F-16. "We are not effectively allowed to do much at all with the airplane." The S…